


but blow the wind

by middlecyclone



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Emma AU, F/M, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:54:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28273443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlecyclone/pseuds/middlecyclone
Summary: “Leave it, Augustine," said Mercymorn, and drained her champagne flute. "No romance you could concoct would ever be worth the trouble.”
Relationships: Augustine the First/Mercymorn the First (Locked Tomb Trilogy)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 27
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	but blow the wind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [violetmoods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetmoods/gifts).



> Is this in an approximation of the canon space setting? Yes. Is this a regency AU? Also yes. Shouldn't those things be mutually exclusive? Don't think about it too hard! Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Title from Johnny Flynn's Queen Bee.

“Now look—I did that,” Augustine said smugly, gesturing across the ballroom where Palamades Sextus had draped himself floppily over the shoulders of his cavalier in a way that did not make any sense whatsoever, based on their respective heights. Camilla Hect was looking up at him, the besotted look in her dark eyes perfectly matching the foolish grin spread across his narrow face. “Me. I made them happen.”

Mercymorn made a face rather like someone encountering a writhing pile of worms in a place where one had not anticipated encountering any worms whatsoever, writhing or not. “I sincerely fucking doubt _that,_ Augustine.”

“No, but I did,” said the Saint of Patience, “I matchmade them. It was very elegantly done, if I do say so myself.”

“Footage absolutely not found,” Mercy said flatly. “Are you kidding? They were—an inevitability, at best. You no more created their match than you helped the sun rise in the morning. Actually, you demonstrably have done much more to help the sun rise than—”

Augustine kicked her in the ankle. 

“No fighting, children,” said the Emperor, drifting up behind them, a half-full glass of champagne in one hand and a thick slice of bone-white wedding cake in the other. “And Augustine, as much as I appreciate a wedding, I’d also appreciate it if you could restrain yourself from any further matchmaking. It sets such a bad example, encouraging necromancer-cavalier interrelations, you know?”

Mercy raised one cold, thin eyebrow. The Emperor winced to look at her expression and drifted right back out of the situation.

“Yeowch,” Augustine muttered.

“He does have a point, sort of, not really,” said Mercymorn, and drained her champagne flute. “Leave it, August. No romance you could concoct would ever be worth the trouble.”

“Just the one more,” he said, “for Ianthe. Her personality, bless her, is so unbelievably dreadful that you have to admit she’d never find anyone without my help. I’d be doing a public service, really, making sure she never inflicts herself upon a singles mixer; can you _imagine_?”

“God save us all,” sighed Mercymorn and, snatching Augustine’s glass out of his unprotesting hand, drained his champagne too.

* * *

“Sorry, _who_ is this?”

“Harrowhark Nonagesimus,” Augustine said proudly. “She’s a bit—well, rough around the edges, yes, but she’s quite the little necromancer. I think she’ll do nicely.”

“She looks about twelve,” Mercy sneered. “Surely you’re not so desperate to marry Ianthe off that you’re resorting to child brides?”

Augustine refused to dignify that comment with a response. 

“I can _hear_ you,” said the infant sullenly. She looked like she’d been attacked by a palette of face paint and then swaddled by an especially Goth vampire. Mercy could not _believe_ the social levels she was being forced to stoop to lately.

“You’re being rude, Joy,” Augustine said lightly. “I wanted you to meet Harrow so that she could see how definitively the coarser manners of her beau Miss Nav simply do not match up to the behavior of a true lady like yourself. Please, I beg you, comport yourself with the dignity that behooves someone of your situation.”

“Gideon is _not_ my—” 

But Mercy was no longer listening to the shrill bleating of the child; she was thinking longingly and in great detail about how satisfying it would be to shove Augustine’s head in a fountain. O! how he would burble as the water trickled up his nose; o! how he would complain about his clothes being ruined.

Mercy smiled distantly just thinking about it.

* * *

"Ianthe hit on me," Augustine said, shuddering.

"Come again?" Mercy said, blinking. "I thought you just said Ianthe hit on you, which is obviously so patently absurd that I feel I may need to stage an intervention for your sudden delusions."

“We were—coming back from the dinner party and she just—” Augustine had a hollow, traumatized look in his eyes. Mercy was beginning, with dawning horror, to think he might be serious. “She reached out and she—I told her she had me confused for Harrow—”

“Well, that’s not fucking likely,” Mercy interrupted.

“She declared adoration and then she called me,” Augustine said, burdened by an impossible weight, “a _tease_.”

Mercy couldn’t bear it anymore. She lost whatever remaining tenuous grasp she had on her dignity and broke into hysterical snorts of laughter and for once, the Saint of Joy lived up to her name.

“Mercy! Stop laughing at me!”

* * *

Dinner, again. Harrow was looking at her pasta like it had committed a horrific crime against her and her family. Ianthe was on her third helping.

The Emperor looked at them, all kindly and paternal, and Mercymorn embarked on a long and involved daydream involving shoving her rigatoni up his kindly and paternal nose.

“Why don’t we play a little game,” said God. “Everyone go around the table and say a fun fact! Or two moderate facts. Or even three exceedingly dull facts, if it’s all you can come up with!” 

Mercy’s daydream extended itself to include marinara sauce and possibly a garlic breadstick or two.

Spitefully, she embarked on a long and impossibly dry set of anecdotes about Cassiopeia’s ceramics collection. Harrow offered a few not entirely inaccurate notes about the flexibility of the scapula, and Ianthe told a moderately alarming tale about a prank she had pulled on her cavalier when she was eleven. 

“A fun fact…” Gideon intoned, when they all turned to look at him expectantly, “I'm not sure I have one, let alone three."

“Oh, give up already,” Augustine said lightly, but with real and startling venom behind the words, “we all know there’s nothing going on in your head that’s worth sharing with the class.”

The room fell silent. The Saint of Duty looked rather like Augustine had smacked him in the face with a wet rubber chicken. Ianthe, on the other hand, looked like it was her birthday and her present was a dead body and a pair of leather trousers. 

"If you feel that way, Augustine," said Gideon. "Excuse me," and left. 

Mercy didn’t particularly _like_ Gideon most days, but she still felt that the Necrosaints should be trying to present something loosely resembling a united front, at least in front of the babies.

“Badly done, Augustine,” Mercy said, and left it at that.

* * *

Mercymorn took a deep breath, held it for a long moment, and then exhaled again. She didn’t want to do this, but—well.

“I’m not going to make a long speech, August,” she said. “I can’t. Maybe if I loved you less, I would be able to talk about it more, but—you know what I am. I give you the truth, at least, but I have harangued you and lectured you and you have borne it like no other could, although—well—it’s not like you didn’t deserve it. But still—oh, _say_ something, Augustine, for all that is holy—”

“Joy,” said the Saint of Patience, softly but with great feeling, “do not despair. I—”

She blinked at him.

“I can’t make speeches either,” he said, startled by his own words, and kissed her.


End file.
